I first was given this book years back by a friend’s father who said I had to read it in 2019, and it again found its way to me from my own bookshelf in 2022. It is quoted by many in the business and spiritual worlds as a must-read and I couldn’t agree more.
 
I first read this book in 2019, when I was at a place in my life where even though I didn’t realize it, I was searching for something bigger, my purpose. And I now know it as my ‘personal legend’ the same thing Santiago is looking for in this amazing book.
 
It’s a book about trust, following your heart, you’re calling, fear of failure, and happiness. All things I have desired and feared myself at the same time and still today am learning to embrace.
 
I’m a dentist for over 15 years, an entrepreneur, an educator, a community contributor and an innovator. The latter three, I only came to realize this as I started on the journey to my own personal legend.
 
What is a personal legend? It is the place where we are alive, free, happy and find fulfillment within, while also serving the world around us! To those who are living this already, I commend you and you are an inspiration to me and to so many others. This is something I was on the search for and I still am. Don’t get me wrong, I am and have been very happy, blessed with an amazing wife and two beautiful girls, great parents, family and friends who have all touched my life in different ways.
 
But what I’m talking about here is that inner calling, not for “more”, for some would agree would be a pursuit of things and “would never be enough”. I’m talking about a calling, a purpose and what this book refers to, as “following your heart to truly realize your dreams” and experiencing and embracing the journey along the way to find this. What is that desire deep inside you? In your heart, that is calling you, though you don’t know what it is yet, you know it’s calling, poking and nudging you somewhere.
 
The book reveals “when a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person realize his dream”. It talks about stepping out of the “doing” and really seeing, listening and trusting the heart as Santiago describes “the omens”.
 
And as I write this, I can be honest and say this has been hard for me, and I still remind myself of this every day. The past 10 years have been marked with amazing joy and some significant challenges.
 
In the last 10 years, I got married to my amazing wife, have had some amazing travel experiences (we love to make experiences to remember), have been blessed with two absolutely amazing, little girls who hold places in my heart that I never even knew I had, co-owned 2 dental practices in a family business with my wife and my brother (both Dentists), and have been proud of the dental treatment I’ve learned to provide from complex occlusal rehabilitation, IV sedation, complex surgery, implants, soft and hard tissue grafting and incorporating the treatment of obstructive sleep apnea into my day-to-day practice.
 
For challenges, we lost our first practice to the hundred-year flood that hit Calgary in 2013 impacting both our dental practices and our home at the time, suddenly losing one of my greatest mentors and my best friend, my father, a challenging second practice transition due to multiple misrepresentations and then a second practice shutdown with the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
Despite all this, this is where my realization of my “Personal Legend” began…
 
It was the COVID shutdown in 2020 that allowed me to listen to my heart to figure out “What is it truly saying?”
 
It led me to embrace my personal values “inspire influence, educate” and say out loud what my heart was really saying, “What can I give to this world?” without knowing what to do….
 
“There is only one way to learn the alchemist answered, It’s through action…”
 
And what happens if I don’t know what to do, or what I’m doing? and those who tried but didn’t figure it out?
 
“They were looking only for gold… They were seeking the treasure of their personal legend without wanting to actually live out the personal legend.”
 
So I began. I thought “how could I serve a healthy mindfulness webinar with a prominent author to help others during the pandemic embrace mindfulness to get through it”? I started a weekly dental group on Zoom to help other dentists prepare and optimize and position themselves to come out of the pandemic even better than they went into it. And to fulfill my dream to honour my late “Papa” and set up two scholarships in his name, for dental student volunteers for a student-run clinic I founded in dental school called The SHINE Dental Clinic serving inner-city youth in Edmonton. And I created my own non-profit called “Cause to Smile” to inspire “doing good beyond the walls of our clinics” and inspire support of local grassroots community organizations fueled by the dental industry.
 
That was the easy part of my journey (as crazy as that may sound to you) because this was only the beginning of me truly stepping out as the shepherd Santiago did, with his flock of sheep…
 
This was me arriving now at the crystal shop after selling my sheep and trekking to a new land, but I hadn’t even begun to cross the desert yet… and I was scared…
 
“That makes sense” The Alchemist answered, “Naturally it’s afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you’ve won…”, “Well then why should I listen to my heart?…” “Because you will never, again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend to not have heard your heart, what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and the world.”
 
I started with an idea to make an impact on the dentist and patients in a way that I never thought was possible before. I begin my journey and trek across the desert into an unknown land I’ve never known before from dental drill to keyboard, to the creation of a dental technology company that today is called OraQ AI. I had a yearning inside me to do more, impact more, but didn’t know how…
 
“I don’t know how to find a life in the desert”, the boy said. “I know there’s life here, but I don’t know where to look”, “Life attracts life”, the alchemist said, “and then the boy understood, he loosened the reins on his horse…” And I started to move with the flow, let my “idea” guide me to wherever it would go… I got connected with some amazing clinicians in the AI space who now have become great friends and mentors, started research with the University of Alberta, worked with the Alberta machine intelligence Institute, and then formally started OraQ AI in June of 2021.
 
The details of my journey from holding a dental drill to living by a keyboard, from patients’ mouths to virtual meetings, is a story that I will continue to share along with more in other blogs, but back to the trek along the desert…
 
I can tell you that I’ve learned so much and met so many great people, many who are now working alongside me to realize our common dream at OraQ, but I’ve still been tested in so many ways… especially this past year dealing with health challenges (with is another story for another blog).  
 
The Alchemist answered; “what you still need to know is this: Before a dream is realized, the soul of the world tests everything that was learned along the way. It does not because it is evil, but so that it can in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we move towards that dream. That’s the point at which most people give up, It’s the point at which as we say in the language of the desert, one dies of thirst, just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon! Every search began with a beginner’s luck and every search ends with the victor being severely tested”
 
So, I still trek along the desert on my search, tested and knowing I am still far from my destination, but I feel alive, happy and living my heart’s calling. And it’s why I’m brave enough to write this and share this with you today.
 
I do hope that I’ll be able to write one day saying that I’ve found “it” but as this amazing book teaches “as we looked to fulfill a dream, it looks to find us just the same if we let it.”
 
To those who ask me, “how do you do all these things that you do?” I want to say: I listen to the wind, follow my heart, and fall down a lot along the way, but I’m happy doing it (even when scared) and listen to my body now when maybe I didn’t listen enough before. I hope that this book and this dentist’s search for his personal legend also inspires you just a little bit, to listen and follow that urge to live differently so that one day, we can meet together and dig for our treasure under the base of the sycamore tree…
 
Thank you for reading